


Harmony

by ecphrasis



Category: The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Cultural Differences, F/M, Original Character(s), Political Alliances, Secret Relationship
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-01
Updated: 2020-06-01
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:14:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24484135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ecphrasis/pseuds/ecphrasis
Summary: Elrond of Imladris has come to the Woodland Realm to bear witness to the coronation of his distant kinsman, Thranduil. What should be a routine diplomatic mission quickly becomes perilous, however, when a series of murders coincide with growing unrest among the oppressed Silvan population. Along with Celebrían, the daughter of Thranduil’s erstwhile enemies, Elrond must help his host secure peace, even as he contemplates his own impending ascension to kingship, and his right to rule.
Relationships: Celebrían/Elrond Peredhel
Comments: 9
Kudos: 18





	Harmony

**Harmony**

First fight. Then fiddle. Ply the slipping string  
With feathery sorcery; muzzle the note  
With hurting love; the music that they wrote  
Bewitch, bewilder. Qualify to sing  
Threadwise. Devise no salt, no hempen thing  
For the dear instrument to bear. Devote  
The bows to silks and honey. Be remote  
A while from malice and from murdering.  
But first to arms, to armor. Carry hate  
In front of you and harmony behind.  
Be deaf to music and to beauty blind.  
Win war. Rise bloody, maybe not too late  
For having first to civilize a space  
Wherein to play your violin with grace.  
 _First Fight. Then Fiddle_ \- Gwendolyn Brooks

Chapter One: The Rot Beneath the Green Growth

Birds sing in peacetime and in war, but in peace he does not have to listen for the sounds beneath their song, the tramp of enemy feet in the far distance, the crackling pops of burning forest, the wind whistling through blood-streaked banners and sharp-pointed orc helms. He can open himself fully to the music of springtime, and whistle to the birds, and hear them chirrup back.

They travel lightly through the greening forest. The trees are very old, and the golden light of evening slants through the branches and sets glimmering fires on the bright silver of his armor, and his horse’s mane, and the standards that his twenty attendants hold. It turns Celebrían’s hair to a waterfall of pure, reflected light, so bright he cannot look directly at her.

His attendants wear the habit of Imladris’ soldiers, his silver and blue, and he himself wears silver armor, emblazoned with his sigil of a six-pointed silver star surrounded by the silver stars of Lindon, and his rich blue cloak streams out behind him. But Celebrían, who at the request of Thranduil has come alone, absent the soldiers of his former enemies, the Lord and Lady of the Sindar in Lothlórien, is dressed in light green and burnished gold. Although she rides next to him, as a peer and coequal, she sits her horse in the strange style of the Galadhrim, and she does not have her hair bound in the formal, intricate braids of the Noldor, but instead leaves it loose and flowing. It shivers and shifts with the motion of her horse, flickering like flames, magnifying the evening light.

They do not travel in silence. Eglerion has a liquid voice, and he sings the old traveling-songs of the Sindar. Elrond knows that these stem from Silvan heresy, but despite Maedhros and Maglor’s stern warnings against honoring the spirit-gods of the cave dwellers, he joins in. The link between the traveling-songs and the evil spirits of the old world is so distant that few elves even remember it.

He sings the Song of the Sun-Dappled Leaves, and when the harmony loops around the final verse, he hears Celebrían’s bird-clear voice cutting through the deeper registers of the men. She sings the song correctly, in the old dialect that was fading even when Menegroth still gleamed bright underground, and her final note holds the whole world still and shimmering. He does not breathe until she does, and then she turns to him and smiles at him, openly, happily, and he spurs his horse forward to chat with the captain of his guard, Glorfindel, so that he is not overcome by the memory of her sweet lips against his own.

He is too old to be so foolish, so tangled up in contradictory desires, so overcome by the weakness of his flesh, but after seven years of brutal war, after the deaths of his kinsmen and his people, his friends and allies, his king, he had returned to Imladris, and found the city decked in his bright colors, and a revel organized to celebrate the new peace. And in the center of all his swirling elves, situated right in the midst of his great grief at losing Gil-Galad, and his great joy at witnessing the first true peace in millennia, was Celebrían, gleaming in green and gold and silver, as alive as freshly budded flowers after the last snowstorm of a long winter. She had drawn him away from the tables loaded with sweet summerwine and freshly roasted venison, waybread made pleasant by honey and fresh fruit, and the new songs written to honor the victorious heroes. 

She had placed her hands on his scarred chest, touched him, her flesh separated from his flesh only by his tunic and his shirt, and in the dialect of Silvan spoken by Amdir’s kin, she had told him “Do not speak.”

He can hear her mellifluous words echoed in his stallion’s three-beat gait. He can hear her heart beating, he can hear his own, beating in time to hers, almost as fast as it did when he held the battle-line against the charging orcs in Gorgoroth. He cannot get her voice out of his head, her speech all vowels, her bright eyes gleaming.

She spoke Silvan as one born to it, despite her heritage. Her mother and father had left her in Amdir’s care for many years when she was younger, and when they were the range-lords of Gil-Galad, and were required to travel for years at a time. He should have responded in Quenya, he should have rejected her invitation to absolve himself of the inviolate Laws of their kin, he should have refused her offer, he should have pretended he did not know what she was offering. But he had spent seven years in a valley of dust, breathing in the screams of the dying, and when he consoled himself during the long hours of agony, when he thought of what he fought for, he had imagined Imladris in summer, lush with grapes and wheat and flowering orchards, and, though he could scarcely admit it to himself, Celebrían wandering in their midst.

So, he had not spoken. He had drawn her chin up with his finger, and gazed into her eyes, bluer than any wildflower, and he had kissed her. He half expected her to pull away, to remember whose daughter she was, and which gods she served, but she had only drawn herself closer to him, wrapping her arms around his neck, and opening her mouth so he could taste the sweet remnants of cold summerwine on her tongue. And she did not separate herself from him, and he could not bring himself to separate himself from her. He had taken her hand, so skilled in harping, in his own battle scarred hand, and led her to his chambers. 

No fire burned in his grate, and the sound of the festivities traveled along the white stone walls and in through the open window. Her command had silenced him, he had no words to offer her. What was there to say? Her silver hair was long and loose, in the style of the Sindarin, his own was bound up in the elaborate braids of the Fëanorians. Gently, as though she meant to touch an unbroken horse, she reached out her hand to caress his braided hair. She held it a moment, long enough for him to refuse, to cast her away, but instead, he guided her to the key braid, upon which all the others depended.

Her nimble fingers easily undid the sacred knots, each one symbolic of some victory of his House. Her fingers trailed through his hair and grazed against his scalp. He could have pulled away, sent her out, rebraided his dark hair and returned to watching his people reveling, but he had no desire to halt her quick hands in their quest. He wanted only to feel her fingers run through his hair, and to run his fingers through her silver tresses in turn. 

She managed the convoluted knots with ease, and she laughed when he shook his head and his face was momentarily swallowed by his dark mane. He wrapped a single strand of her bright hair around his finger, and the silver outlines of old scars vanished beneath her molten silver locks. Her hair was soft and fragrant with the scent of Imladris’ flowers. He could not help the desire that rose up in that moment, the immediate lust of the flesh, and the far-sighted dream of his soul. Either one he could have denied, but not both together, not after all he had endured.

She pressed her lips to his, and already her hands were unclasping the brooch that kept his tunic sealed, and he was loosening the laces that bound her dress. He saw death in every shadow, unless he touched her glowing flesh.

So he had brought her to his bed, and laid a trail of kisses down her body, open-mouthed and luxurious. Her skin was darkened by long hours spent in the sun, and her body jolted as though struck when he brought his mouth between her legs, and then she moved against him, urging him onwards, and he was only too happy to comply, to forget the long years of warfare and loss, to seek for solace in her body. What words were there for him to say? He had ignored the strength of speech for seven years, had saved his life with his body, and not his mind. Who was he to then deny his body that thing above all things which he, for years, had yearned for?

His shoulders had ached for a few days afterwards, gouged to the point of blood by her short nails. He had expected her to regret their indiscretion, to come to him and ask him to swear an oath that he would never reveal what they, in the joyous haze of hope after war, had done. But instead she had sought him out, finding him alone, and she had kissed him as though by pleasure alone they could halt the motion of the world. And because he had no words for her, he kissed her back.

They were more careful, after. She came only occasionally to his bed, and each one was wary of leaving lasting marks on the other’s flesh. He knew there was talk, there was always talk, but he was an adherent to the true Religion, and he had sworn an oath to uphold the inviolate Laws. Still, he did not allow himself to feel guilty. The strictest interpretation of the Laws precluded any but the most innocent of touches between unwed elves, it was true, but the loosest permitted all but the generative act. (He had to think of it in such terms, or else risk conjuring images whose ensuing fires he would not be capable of stamping out.) Just because he had always held himself to the former since his ascension to his lordship did not mean he could not now adhere to the latter. He did not lie with Celebrían as he would if they were wed, so he did not need to fear punishment for blasphemy.

And even if he did, who was left to punish them? The king was dead, and no other elf held his allegiance. 

But Elrond refuses to remember the touch of his skin against her own, refuses to recall her desperate gasps in his ear as he kissed her neck. He straightens in his saddle, and draws up to Glorfindel, who leads their small party through the forest, and who does not sing. Peace has come, has settled over the land like a hen settles over her eggs, but Glorfindel remains alert for incubating evil.

“Not much further, my lord,” Glorfindel murmurs. “We’re close to a sentry point.”

“Will they delay our passage?”

“They know we’re coming, I’d be surprised if they did. The Lady may give them pause, however.” Celebrían has taken up the higher harmony of another traveling-song, this one a hymn to a cloud’s shade, that was once an adoration of one aspect of the sky-goddess. She sings in Silvan. 

“Perhaps this visit will allow the Woodland Kingdom to end their old rivalry with Lórien.” Glorfindel gives him a glance, a quick head-tilt that Elrond understands, and that discomforts him. Were they not surrounded by his nineteen guards and Celebrían, he knows the captain of his guard would mutter something about the Lady Lórien not having quite the effect on other elven lords as she does on him. Glorfindel knows, or has guessed, enough of what passed between them before her return to Lórien to make Elrond wary. He trusts Glorfindel, loves him, and he knows his most faithful courtier would not see him hurt. But he is Noldorin, and Elrond cannot be thought to be immoral. The Sindar would accept his indiscretion with their lady, provided it was his only one. But the Noldor would reject his claim to kingship if they knew.

“May it be,” Glorfindel says. He does not speak the same dialect of Quenya that Elrond grew up hearing, but the two are composed of such slight differences that neither one feels the need to yield their native tongue. Besides, there are none left who speak Elrond’s dialect, and few who can understand it. To talk in the language of his childhood is pleasant, just as pleasant as riding beneath a warm sun through cool shade on a well-maintained forest road. The war seems more distant than fourteen years. It could have happened a millennia ago, for all the green growth that has sprung up along either side of the white stone path. He names the flowers and the thistles in his head, in his childhood tongue, and in Sindarin, and in Adunaic. He ignores his heart’s nervous leap when Celebrían laughs behind him, and when he drops back to visit with the rear-guard Crithor, he tells himself that he looks at her only to ensure she is not wearied by the long days of riding, and not because she is glowing in the evening light.

Elrond notices the sentry point when they pass it, but he notices too that it is deserted. No elves bar their passage, and his Ring permits him the knowledge that no guards are hidden, out of sight, amongst the leaves of the green trees. He shares this information with Glorfindel, careful to keep his voice low, and they transition from a trot to an easy canter, ostensibly so they can be certain to arrive before the loss of the last light, but truly because Elrond is disquieted by the absence of guards around the final perimeter before citadel in Emyn Duir. 

There are guards standing rigidly erect outside the walkway that leads over a perilous chasm and into the citadel built into the cliff face. They stand six abreast, and three rows deep, and offer a formal salute as they pass, pressing an ox-horn to their lips and sounding the note that opens the gate. They are well-disciplined, and split gracefully in two as their horses approach, and Elrond notes that they are all Sindarin, and they are all dressed in the colors of Thranduil’s House, and not the Woodland Realm proper.

The gate opens soundlessly, and his party rides single-file across the gorge. The bridge is made of suspended stone, and on either side is a sheer drop down into a distant river. He urges his horse forward, and when he enters the city, he looks backward to assuage his sudden fear that somehow, Celebrían's horse had slipped and spilled her over the causeway. She meets his eyes, and he does not know how to interpret the look of pain that flickers briefly across her face, before she resolves herself into a smile. He could look at her forever, silhouetted against the green of the forest and the dark blue of the sky, suspended in the air by a narrow bridge of light grey stone, but he knows he has already looked for far too long. He dismounts from his horse, and a groom is instantly at hand to take the stallion’s reins.

Elrond sees with a sudden jolt that the man has a large red welt across his cheek, and a livid, bruised eye. His injuries could almost look like the casualties of war, except the war is fourteen years past. And then he realizes that guards are stationed along the wall, facing inward instead of out, and armed as though for battle. The other groomsmen who come forward to retrieve his escort’s horses are similarly battered, one injured so badly that his left arm hangs limp, evidently dislocated from its socket. Elrond’s skin prickles with wariness, he remembers the sight of a distant ferret sniffing the scent of hunting dogs, and vanishing deep into its hole. He stands by the bridle of Celebrían's horse, and holds out his hand to help her dismount.

“Something’s wrong,” she murmurs, in her soft, low voice.

“Yes,” he says. He brings his lips to her ear, hidden as they are by her horse’s body from the general view of the elves, and he forces himself not to smell her scent, of fresh air and sunlight and (strangely, impossibly), the red flowers of Imladris. Instead, he warns her, “Do not wander anywhere alone.”

“Thank you, my lord,” she says brightly, altogether too loudly. Belatedly, he steps back from her to an acceptable distance, he releases her hand from his own. He takes his position in the front of his company, with Glorfindel beside him, and Celebrían behind him, and with two guards dressed in Thranduil’s colors, they are marched up through the winding streets of the city.

He can smell the bitter scent of fire, and he is astonished to find that the city is almost silent. Imladris sings with activity in the time shortly after sundown, as elves purchase warm meals from vendors, and congregate with their kinfolk after a day’s labor. The young will dance or sing beneath the stars, and the old will wander the gardens, or sometimes sit and recite long passages from the old histories. The streets are always full of folk coming and going, moving through their lives, stopping to talk, or hurrying to catch a friend, and there is always some melody rising in the distance, along with the scent of plentiful food. But the citadel in Emyn Duir is silent, and no elves move through the streets except for their small party.

“Where are the citizens of the Woodland?” Elrond asks one of the Sindarin guards, a tall man, large and dark, with a vicious scar over his eye.

“The city is preparing for the coronation of the Uncrowned King,” the elf says. He is firm in his response, it is clear he will make no other. Elrond has a sudden vision of the plague year from when he was very small. There are not many illnesses capable of killing elves, but the Enemy was clever, and he released his fell beasts into elvish forests, infected with blood-poison that spread from soul to soul, and ravaged all the kingdoms for nine agonizing months, before the Healers found a cure potent enough to draw out the infection. Then too, the cities were silent, unmoving, inert, like the carcass of an old animal putrid and swollen by the heat of the sun, ready to burst and scatter its innards across the dust of a dry hillock. 

But something tells him the trouble runs deeper than a plague. No illness dislocates a man’s shoulder, or blackens his eye. He has not brought his sword, its conspicuous absence a ceremonial marker of the peace into which his world has somehow stumbled. He has with him only a hunting knife whose blade is as long as his forearm, and a small dagger tucked in his boot.

The streets, he notices, are freshly swept, and are scrubbed white to the point of gleaming. The only area of his city that regularly glistens with such intensity is the part of that contains the whipping post, as he insists every drop of blood be washed away after each punishment.

“We use animal fat to wash our streets of blood,” Elrond says, hedging a guess. The guard pauses, and then he opens his mouth:

“Animal fat? In such large quantities? Lye is so much more effective.”

“We’re to escort the Uncrowned King’s honored guests in silence,” the other guard says. “I apologize for the breach of protocol, my lord Imladris and my lady Lothlórien.”

“As you were,” Elrond says. The man relaxes into the order, stops thinking and resumes his task. Elrond mulls over the admission, wonders whether it actually proves anything. Certainly if someone had suggested that he clean his streets with animal fat, he might have said the same thing. But his streets are never void of life, and his citizens do not cower in their houses, and his guards do not face inwards when they stand upon his ramparts.

The distance between the gates of the city and the entrance to the royal palace is roughly twenty minute’s walk. When they arrive, they find the gates standing open to welcome them, and the Uncrowned King, Thranduil Oropherion, surrounded by his father’s advisors, waiting to greet them. Elrond is struck by the tension the elves hold in their shoulders, and by the long swords they keep at their sides. The only one unarmed in Thranduil, who spreads his arms wide in a gesture of hospitality.

“Honored guests, kinsmen, welcome to the Woodland Realm. Your presence gladdens me.”

“Uncrowned King,” Elrond says, dipping his head respectfully to his distant cousin. “I am honored to receive your kind welcome.”

“Uncrowned King,” Celebrían says. “My cousin, I am pleased to be amongst my kin once more.” Thranduil embraces Celebrían, and Elrond hates himself for the surge of black jealousy that coils round his heart and vanishes, swift as a startled snake sunning on a boulder slithers into its hole. Thranduil next embraces him, and Elrond feels how gaunt the prince is beneath his heavy robes. His face too is sunken, his eyes dark, his hair lank. He looks as though he’d recently been rescued from a torturer, not as though he’s been preparing to assume his fallen father’s crown. 

His head is bare, his hair long and loose. Elrond flinches despite himself when he brushes against it, thinking of Celebrían’s bright tresses. 

“A feast is prepared for you, my kinsmen,” Thranduil says. “Please, enter and be merry in my halls.” He presents both of them with a loaf of warm bread and a small vial of salt, and they eat the host-offering and enter into the citadel. Elrond notices that his advisors, silent, staring members of the diaspora of a shattered Doriath, close ranks quickly around the future king, and that as soon as they pass through the gates, they are shut and deadbolted against the silent exterior. His knife is a sure weight on his hip, but he cannot help wondering whether anything he fears is grounded in reality. Sometimes, after staring out into the dark, on guard against an oncoming enemy, a soldier imagines facs in the shapes of trees, and reads malice in every branch’s movement. Perhaps he too, conditioned by years of war and intrigue, sees trouble where no trouble exists.

But he did not imagine Thranduil’s thin frame, and he is not imagining the way his attendants press closer around him, shielding him from something that discomforts them in the jewel-bright hall. Glorfindel, he sees, has thrown his silver cloak over his left shoulder, to better permit access to the long sword he wears, sheathed, at his side.

* * *

They are permitted to wash the dust of the road from their weary bodies, and then to dress in formal robes and to partake in a feast held in the citadel’s great hall. The rocks are inlaid with glimmering gems of all shapes, and Elrond cannot help the calculus that crosses his mind and vanishes. He has struggled to ensure that his people do not starve. Without direction from Lindon, he has had to set his own prices for wheat and wood and wine, and the more exotic products produced in the west and north of the world have become difficult to access. He has spent a vast portion of his treasury ensuring that no widows taste hunger, and he has had to rebuild damaged buildings and rehome exiles from Gil-Galad’s kingdom. He does not have jewels to ornament his walls; he is blessed to have meat and mead at his table. So how has the Woodland Realm, which suffered the disastrous loss of almost half of their soldiers, managed to decorate their halls with gemstones?

Celebrían has been housed in chambers directly opposite his own, and after he has dressed himself, he sits before his fireless grate (there is a pile of exceedingly expensive cedar wood stacked before it, which he cannot bring himself to burn, although the evening is cool), and wonders whether he should leave his door open or closed, and whether he should knock on hers. They are expected to arrive together, as she has not been permitted any of her own people. Still, her mere presence will go a long way towards reducing the tensions that have drawn the Woodland Realm and Lothlórien ever closer to conflict. The nobles are furious at what they perceive to be the betrayal of Oropher’s forces in the final years of battle of Dagorlad, and he has read Galadriel’s concerns of internecine conflict, now that the larger enemy has been defeated. He has seen a tree withstand a blast from a thunderbolt, only to topple when a breeze whisks through its branches. He is not willing to watch that happen to his kin.

Eventually, he hears a gentle rap on his door, and he opens it to find her dressed in Amdir’s green and her parents’ dark gold, her hair still long and loose, but held back by a hairnet of sparkling diamonds.

“Can you tell I swept them off the floor?” she asks dryly, and he laughs, and permits himself the indulgence of kissing her proffered hand.

“You look lovely, Lady Lórien.” Anyone hearing his compliment would interpret it as the politeness of the nobly born.

“Oh, thank you,” she says, politely deflecting. He cannot smell the pungent scent of cedar coming from her chambers, so he concludes she too must have been unwilling to burn the wood worth almost half its weight in silver. “But I’ve never thought green was my ideal color. I look better in blue.” Dressed in blue, with her bright silver hair, she could be the living embodiment of his colors. She has not ever worn blue to any official function for that exact reason, because she would look like she belonged to him, to his house. He wonders if she dresses in blue when she is at home, dwelling with the Silvan in the ruins of Amdir’s kingdom, or else with the Sindar alongside her parents.

“Anything you wear is beautified by you, my lady,” he responds.

He dutifully offers his arm to her, but he cannot help his smile when she looks up at him with her eyes, bluer than any ocean, agleam in the torchlight.

“I find these things horribly dull,” she says. “I far prefer to discuss our problems plainly, I cannot stand mincing around courtesies until no one knows whether they’ve been flattered or insulted.”

“Always assume insults and always give them,” he tells her. “Dinners very quickly stop being boring if everyone abides by those rules.”

“You’re incorrigible, Lord Imladris,” she murmurs. He shivers at the sound of his name in her mouth, the way she rolls her tongue around the words as though tasting them. Her speech is ever so slightly influenced by Silvan, her words carry the faint stigma of elision, and they glide together in a way that must have driven her tutors mad, when she was younger. She is capable of speaking properly in council, Valar know he’s heard enough of her speeches, but her fluid diction strangely thrills him. “I’ve not seen so many jewels in many years,” she says. Her words are light, but he detects the question behind them, and he meets her gaze to let her know that he too is troubled by the opulence.

“If the food is half so rich, it’ll take a century to eat the main course,” he responds, which could, if they are being overheard, be construed as either admiration or criticism. They are seated between two of Thranduil’s stern-faced advisors, Sindarin lords of scarred visages and gleaming armor. Even at dinner, they wear their swords, and he cannot help but feel glad that he has worn his knife. But for what reason? The dinner is luxurious, richer than anything he’s eaten since the victory revel fourteen years past, and there is no hint of violence or illness. A harpist strums in the corner, joined at intervals by a wordless singer or light drums, or a quartet of flutes, and everyone seems merry. There is no shortage of wine or meat, and each lord is accompanied by a well-dressed, noble woman. He had thought Oropher had a more equitable council, but perhaps the uncrowned king has made changes to the status of his father’s advisors.

But Thranduil does not eat. Thranduil is not merry. Thranduil does not have a sword at his waist, and Thranduil is not seated beside a stunning woman. With that realization, Elrond relaxes. He had seen Thranduil kissing a girl, flaxen-haired nad slender, but strong enough to string one of the Galadhrim’s great bows, some kinswoman of Amdir’s, and a descendant of one of the many Silvan chieftains. The reason for the stillness of the city, and Thranduil’s misery, becomes immediately clear. The girl must have perished by some chance or misfortune, and left her lover bereft of father and mother and future wife all at once. No wonder the poor prince is so thin, no wonder he only picks listlessly at his food, and does not raise his head, even when the music is particularly moving.

Elrond finds he can truly enjoy the excellent fare, and he swallowed his goblet of wine almost in a single gulp. He thinks on what gift it might be appropriate to give to Thranduil as a symbol of his sorrow. He is so wrapped up in his musings that he almost misses the singer’s clear voice, which begins on an extraordinarily high night, and only goes higher. But the room stills, even the harpist ceases in her harping, and a server, a young elf of about one hundred, stands in a shard of moonlight and sings. She is dressed in a grey shift, and he sees with some surprise that her hair is short-cropped, scarcely longer than his finger. Her skin is darkened by the sun, and her eyes are coal-dark and gleaming with some unspeakable emotion.

“O World-Hearth of living souls,  
Heaven’s eye and justice’ fire  
Gaze upon all living souls  
And behold the exile’s anger-”

She sings in Silvan, and Elrond knows this is an ancient song. The tune is haunting, nothing like the melodic harmonies of the civilized elves, and he knows it is a hymn to the Sun-God, celebrating his aspect as Protector-God. It is strange entertainment, but he is moved by the passion with which the singer hurls her words.

And then she is struck in the face with a guard’s spear-butt, twice in quick succession, and Elrond can imagine how her teeth shatter in her mouth. Through pooling blood she tries to continue, but her jaw is snapped with vicious finality by a third blow. Celebrían is on her feet before he has fully processed what he has witnessed. The Sindarin nobles, who did not even look up when the song began, resume their eating.

Elrond looks to the uncrowned king, and finds Thranduil’s eyes fixed on the empty space where the singer stood. His cheeks are streaked with tears, but he does not move, does not intervene. Celebrían has begun to move, she will anger their hosts, and he cannot allow her to shatter the fragile peace. He takes her arm in his hand, uses his years of battle-strength to force her to sit.

“Elrond,” she says. She has never named him outside of his bedchamber, she has never dared to breach courtesy so thoroughly. The word is a warning, any louder and anyone might have heard, might have wondered at their excessive familiarity.

“Look at the nobles,” he tells her. “Now look at the king.”

“He’s not in charge,” she murmurs, seeing what he sees. He has not imagined it, then. He releases her, she slumps backwards into her chair. The silence is deafening, the harpist is at her harp, but she will not lift her hands to play. She sits with a straight back, wearing Thranduil's dark green, unmoving. The girl’s scream is echoing in Elrond’s head, were it not for the blood on the floor, he would half think he had imagined the whole incident. 

“We’ll figure out what’s going on,” he tells her. “But we cannot make enemies.” And so she sits upright, as does he. He watches the nobles, and he watches the king.

Neither he nor Celebrían manage to stomach another bite of the rich food.


End file.
